Critical Thinking

Janet Jones

Week 3 Discussion

Scholarly versus Popular Resources

1. Define term management according to Wikipedia.com. Would you consider this resource to be credible? Why or why not? Is it credible?

The term management in all business and organizational activities is the act of coordinating the efforts of people to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. The main purpose of general interest is to provide information in a general manner and Wikipedia does that. I consider this source to be somewhat credible because it is the substantive news or general interest category but also a popular resource according to definition of scholarly. I guess it is scholarly, because it is concerned with academic study and is viewed as scholarly with respect to the currency of information that is up to date.

2. Is it ever permissible to use non scholarly resources and why? What resources would you opt to use if you were unable to locate a peer-reviewed article? Why would you select these resources?

It would not be wise to use non scholarly resources because they are perceived as bias and you would have to make an assumption without all the credible points of mention within your content about the authors overall intentions being viewed as impartial. Resources that I would opt to use would first be the five traditional evaluating resources criteria. Next, I would weigh the objective reasoning, writing style and critique the methodology being presented. Last, I would look at the relevance of the subject being covered, references, attachments, and appendices or cited sources. I would select these resources because, they will help me determine if the information that I am researching is scholarly or non scholarly.

3. Find credible resources for use in the field of management. Include the link and describe why you selected the site and why it would be useful for managers. What reasoning did you use to determine the credibility of this site?

http://hfma.org is the link that I explored and I think that it is useful for managers because they have credible information available for all careers under the management umbrella. The reasoning I decided to use to determine credibility were legitimacy, stages of critical reading and analysis and preliminary understanding stages. Then categorize it in one of the scholarly distinguished groups. Then I would apply the traditional evaluating criteria resources as they relate to coverage content, currency and methodology.

4. How could you determine if the resource that you are reviewing is biased in its information?

My determination about the resources being biased was reached by reviewing the objectivity of the content and the currency of information. I would then check for publishing by reputable organizations, the updated material on the topic and the dates of publication. Also, I would focus on the content coverage and material relevance with respect to objective reasoning.

http://library.waldenu.edu

http://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/ref/search

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LoBiondo-Wood, J. Haber, & B. Krainovich-Miller (Eds.). Nursing research:

Methods, critical appraisal, and utilization (5th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Mosby.